Patch 3.22, the Feast, and Jobs in PvP Revisited

[Petite]

It’s been a while I wanted to start a discussion on the state of pvp in general. Being I’ve been pvping since Frontlines came out, I think I have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about.
Reminder that these are my opinions.


Casting and interruptions:
As of 3.22, in order to interrupt a cast, someone must deal damage totaling 15% or more of the caster's total HP. This percentage is simply too big especially when considering most casters now use VIT accessories. See the video down below (I don’t play BLM and am very mediocre at it):

https://youtu.be/SZhTNH6PVOU

The solution I propose is to implement “casting penalty brackets”:
• 1 < 140 potency hits should take away casting progress totaling 10% of the cast bar’s length.
• 140 ≤ 200 take away 15% (the 140 is to include split shot in the bracket)
• 201 and over take away 20%

This way, you're not completely hopeless if you’re being attacked, but you should still mind not being a standing turret when attacked. Equanimity and Surecast would negate any penalty incurred.

MCH and BRD:
The Gauss/Minuet changes in 3.22 made it so there’s barely any drawback to using them at all times. There should remain a degree of strategy to using them as was intended when the devs first though of these abilities. Here are the changes I would make:
• Using Gauss/Minuet: No range penalty from 6-25y
• Not using Gauss/Minuet: No range penalty from 0-18y
• Have Gauss/Minuet on/off on a 6s cooldown so people commit to their decisions

SMN:
While I agree that Deathflare and Tri-disaster needed a nerf, I don’t think their hard-casted dots and Painflare should have been downgraded. I’d put Painflare’s potency back to 200 and have all single-casted dots (miasma, bio I, bio II) keep their original duration. This means only dots from Tri-Disaster should be shorter.

MNK:
One ilm punch should not be able to remove Aetherflow. Aetherflow is too integral to how SCHs and SMNs function since they revolve around the ability.

MELEE DPS:
Due to the erratic nature of pvp (people running around, netcode delays, etc), the potency penalty incurred from missing a melee positional skill should be lowered a bit. For example: a missed Aeolian Edge would do 266 potency in damage, decreasing the gap between a fully missed one (240) and an rightly done one (320) by 33%.

THE FEAST:
1. Matchmaking should not exist in 4v4 solo queues. You should not be forced into teams of lower skill because you busted your ass to achieve a higher rank. Solo 4v4 should remain random, thus making your ranking a result of how much you can pull your own weight in general.

2. I don’t see the point in “tier qualifiers”. They just seem to serve to discourage people from pushing through if they fail them. Your ranking should be the only thing to decide your current tier.

3. There should be a 15 8v8 match barrier of entry to participate in 4v4 solo/light matches. “This is my first pvp” should never be found in a ranked mode's chat log.

4. To eliminate Lore farmers, people should earn 15 Tomestones of Lore per win and only 5 per loss instead of a set of 10 no matter the outcome.



So these are the points I wanted to make about pvp. In hopes this thread catches the attention of the devs, I also wish to hear your feedback.
Please do not derail the subject or post meaningless and inflammatory comments.

Take care.

[Exira]

You can edit your first post to bypass the length instead of making 3 posts

[Houston009]

1. Matchmaking should not exist in 4v4 solo queues. You should not be forced into teams of lower skill because you busted your ass to achieve a higher rank. Solo 4v4 should remain random, thus making your ranking a result of how much you can pull your own weight in general.

FFS, Please, make this happen.

[RiceisNice]

Casting and interruptions:

I agree that something really needs to be done in regards to the threshold, especially if they have plans to adjust the room so that there are less walls to break LoS. The payouts for getting a cast off is incredibly high from the perspective of a BLM and WMH (whether it be the duration of a CC or the damage output). Lower the threshold a little bit or adjust the the duration of sleep/blizzard/freeze; there's honestly no reason for these to be left untouched when they lowered the duration of SMN's CC, especially in something as fast paced as feast.

MCH and BRD:
Due to the changes to interrupt, there's almost no reason to take off GB/WM. Even outside of PvP, MCH and BRD damage is designed around utilizing these abilities. Without being able to reliably interrupt casts with well timed weaponskills (nevermind that you're trying to interrupt cast times with cast times now...), they're essentially a poor man's BLM outside of their burst period, since their overall CC abiltiy is less influential and has no access to sleep. There's also no reason for them to even have a range penalty beyond 15yd, that defeats the entire advantage of being a ranged job.

SMN:
The base duration of the dots should at least be kept intact. Their secondary source of damage can easily be spread over the entire enemy party, which can be a pain in the arse for certain healer compositions to deal with. All things considered though, the overall nerfs does put them onto level with the two physical ranged, especially when you consider that SMN still has the superior CC abilities through tri bind and blizzard II

MNK:
I don't have a problem with this tbh. We don't need to make a skill functionally useless in both PvP and PvE. That's the trade off for being a melee to begin with, and between having garuda, blizzard II and such, there's options to mitigate how much hell they'll give you.

MELEE DPS:
Melee hurts well enough even without the need for positional (esp when you consider HT, GL3 and poisons), infact DRG has a skils that negate the need for positional and gain the damage bonus anyway.

[Koltik]

MNK:
One ilm punch should not be able to remove Aetherflow. Aetherflow is too integral to how SCHs and SMNs function since they revolve around the ability. Not only that, but NINs and DRGs can’t remove Aetherflow, making it unfair on two fronts.

By this logic sleep shouldn't be usable by WHM or BLM, or it should just root instead, because their counterparts aren't able to completely lock down their targets with 1 ability.

DRG's should not be able to remove bind by using the jump back move.

WAR should not be able to root their target for 5 seconds via holmgang, or burst their target with fellcleave

PLD should not be able to stun without a cooldown.

I could go on, but you get the point.

[Dimitrii]

DRG's should not be able to remove bind by using the jump back move.

Nooooooo leave my elusive jump alone!!! In all seriousness such a handy ability to break bind/holmgang/heavy without the use of purify. Its spoiled me.

[Shurrikhan]

Nooooooo leave my elusive jump alone!!! In all seriousness such a handy ability to break bind/holmgang/heavy without the use of purify. Its spoiled me.

I'd honestly be cool with it being locked out from use due to binds... with a faint delay. You still get that half-second from when you see the cast go off on you to think "oh shit" and hit the button. In exchange though, I'd love to see this reduced to a 90s CD... (Can cut the enmity reduction to 25%.) There, you can now catch and kill negligent DRGs, and their raid mobility and enmity reductions are now far more usefully paced. Hurray.

Overall, the only changes I'd really like to see are some faint buffs to DRK utility via PvP abilities, a better Far Shot, the upcoming NIN changes (which I hope won't be overkill), maybe some PvP CD recasts reduced, and MCH, changed only insofar as somewhat reduces the gap between its burst and lull damage (which is really rather weak compared to a Bard). Change out the 15% damage necessary to interrupt an enemy to .1s cast push-back per %HP, with a chance equal to three or four times the damage dealt as %HP of a full interrupt (45%-60% chance at 15% HP damage, 100% at 33%-25%).

If One-Ilm Punch is to be messed with, make it so Aetherflow loses only one stack at a time, but give One-Ilm Punch a priority system, favoring things like Rampart over Protect rather than being completely random, and allow it to strip 2 buffs at a time on a critical strike. SMNs and SCHs won't feel like unique victims at that point...